The Matrix: Reconstructed
by E.V.A.Graebel
Summary: Posttrilogy. What if the history the Matrix told was not the real one? What if there are other secrets and lies that bind the human world with that of the Machine? How will Zion survive? How will any of them? Chapter 10 up.
1. Chapter 1

**THE MATRIX: RECONSTRUCTED**

* * *

_Caveat lector_.

This is not my universe, however, I have come here to play.

* * *

1.

_Ab initio mundi_.

The wreckage lay in heaping mounds as far as the eye could see. Sputtering flames and the moans of the crippled and dying still flickered all around them. Peace had been won but at such a great price. APUs torn from the dock walkways and smashed onto the floor with their operators still inside, curled tight, as though their exoskeleton might save them in even death. Survivors picked through the destruction looked for familiar faces and all too often, found them.

Two giant holes punctured the dome roof above them, their edges scarred with machine gun fire and the claw-marks of Sentinels that had poured through. The concrete and stone were weakened despite the fact that they held. A collapse would herald the end of Zion despite what Neo had accomplished. A collapse would mean the end of free humanity and they had come too far for that.

Commander Jason Lock stood at the edge of it all and tasted the bitter acid on his tongue that didn't come from his defeat at the hands of the machines. It came from the fact that Morpheus had been right. Neo had been the key to winning the final stanza of the war and he knew for certain that they would all forget that his defense had kept them alive until that point. It is not the general who holds the charge and keeps the enemy at bay who becomes a hero. The hero is the one who leads the final sally forth and turns the tide. Neo would never have been a hero if Zion had fallen in the hours before he made it to the Machine City. Locke knew that and felt it roll through his mouth with bitterness and pain. He'd given so very much to keep them all safe.

"Sir?" Lt. Rand stood just behind him, not close enough to touch, but still waiting for his commander's instructions.

It took Lock a moment to clear his head. He was a battle commander but maybe this too could be a battle. The dock needed to be up and operational as swiftly as possible. Neo's truce might have stopped the Sentinel incursion, but there was no guarantee of how long it would last. When it failed and the machines attacked again, they would need the dock to be at full strength. They would need him.

"Assign the infantry to removing the ammo from the docks first. Send in civilians behind them to retrieve the bodies and when that's done we'll start to work on the rest." He paused for a moment. "And find me a working radio. I want to know how many ships we have left out there."

His eyes caught on the wrecked hulk of the _Hammer_. "We're going to have to send someone into the Matrix to find out what really happened."

"Sir." The Lt.'s attention wandered briefly as a voice came through the short wave radio attached to his ear. "The Council has requested a meeting."

"Tell them I don't have time." Lock brushed the Lt. out of his way. "I have a job to do."

* * *

"Three captains," she started, "but not Morpheus. Such is the price of being right. You lose some of the freedom that once defined you."

Niobe looked tired bereft of her sunglasses. All three of them did. "He has been called to duty on the council."

"Ah," the Oracle nodded as though she had expected the answer.

But the man still standing looked impatient. Roland had been one of the three called, for reasons he did not understand, and things that he did not understand made him uncomfortable. His voice, when he spoke, was gruff. "Why have you called us here?"

"Always so direct and to the point, Roland. You've changed too since the last time I saw you. And I don't just mean the grey hairs." The cigarette was stubbed out with a brief twisting motion and she let her gaze travel around to room to each one of the three.

Niobe in her traditional maroon suit of stamped leather, her hair knotted into intricate whorls that would take hours in the real world, but in the Matrix could be replicated with a thought. There was no humor in her face only an intense wariness that bespoke of her concern. The machine war was finished. There should be no reason that the Oracle needed to contact them. But her certainty was not complete and the Oracle could see that. Niobe had never wanted to believe in the prophecy, and had, only when Neo made her see. She was skeptical but would be the easiest of the three to make believe.

The other two would be the difficult ones.

Roland had shifted uncomfortably when she called attention to his age. The threat of mortality hadn't caught up to him until he saw the wreck that had been his life and his home. She knew that the _Hammer_ lay destroyed inside of the dock and what it had cost him to turn the ship over to Niobe. There hadn't been any other choice that he could have taken, they all ended with the death of his ship, but she knew that part of Roland had died with his ship. Just like part of the man had died fifteen years earlier when the Oracle had found herself outmaneuvered. One of the few times it happened, but Roland still carried the scars of her being wrong, and he was not about to forgive her for that error.

"Are we here to chat or to find out about Neo?" The voice was ascerbic and almost hateful. The Oracle didn't like the narrow lipped Captain of the _Defiant_. Sacẻ had survived the battle with the machines by hunkering down and avoiding any real confrontation. Everything about the woman, from her dark and uncomforting eyes, to the way she had only reluctantly passed on the Oracle's message boded ill for Zion. And yet, they would not be here without this woman, and they all knew it.

The Oracle started to reach for her cigarette and then remembered that she'd put it out. "Who said anything about Neo?"

"Seraph said…" Niobe's words faded. "We just assumed."

"That's the funny thing about assumptions, they're so often wrong." Another cigarette found its way into her hand and she lit it with a comforting sigh. So few comforts were left to her these days, especially now that she felt the edges fraying. "No, I can't tell you what happened to Neo one way or another."

"Do you know?"

"That's not for me to say, Roland. What I've brought you here to discuss is what the truce entails. The Architect has allowed that the minds who wish to free themselves from the Matrix may do so without retribution. That has already begun to some extent. But as you know, you cannot trust him. He may not be human with human lies and frailities, but his program has spent many years feeling the bitter sting of imperfection and he knows how to exploit that flaw now." She inhaled deeply, smoke filling all of the faded edges. "The Kid was the first to self-substantiate, but he will not be the last. While the Architect has made it easier for their minds to leave the Matrix - without anyone to catch them - they will fall." Her eyes close slowly. "And their light goes out. Just. like. that."

Sacẻ snorted. "You're trying to save lives? You're a machine."

"I'm a program." The Oracle snapped back, her patience suddenly worn thin. With great effort she calmed herself and managed to make herself level once again. "There's a difference. You always have a choice of whether or not to believe me. But don't waste my time by coming here with your mind closed. Without _her_ you will be lucky to save one out of ten. I'm offering you a chance. A choice."

Niobe stared intently at her. "Is she like Neo?"

"No, my dear. She is nothing like Neo. He was one of a kind. Really special."

"Then how will she help us?"

The Oracle smiled. "Always pragmatic, Roland. But what you really want to know, is how will she help you? She cannot rebuild the _Hammer_. She cannot bring the _Logos_ back from the Machine City but she can do something much more important."

"What?" He demanded. "What can she do?"

"She can find those that are falling."

"Bullshit." The words leapt out.

"I made a mistake, with you, once. And you've never forgiven me for it."

The conversation had become more personal and both Niobe and Sacẻ were at a loss as to what to think. Roland had been noticeably absent from most of their dealings in the Matrix. He went because that was what he'd been ordered to do, but his ship had never made very many extractions. The _Hammer_ had been a defensive ship for fighting Sentinels as long as anyone could remember. That he'd once known the Oracle was a revelation.

"You're the Oracle. You're supposed to know these things."

The cigarette sat forgotten once again. "I'm a program." She said softly. "I use personality, probability and casuality to map out future possibilities. What you wanted from me was to profess infallibility. No, after everything that has happened, after six attempts to gain what we have here today, I am all too aware that I am not omnipotent. And neither is that old man on the hill for all that he'd have you believe. If I told you that you had that chance again, would you believe me?"

His answer was flat. "No."

"But then," it came with a slight smile. "I already knew that."

"Who is this person we're supposed to find?" Niobe interrupted the moment. "What exactly can she do?"

"Many things." The Oracle told her and again felt the sense of disquiet that frightened her much more than Smith ever had. "But the most important is that she can find the fallen."

* * *

Jessica Swanson had had enough. Everyday full of more bullshit and crap than the last. She looked down at the doctor's letter in her hand and wished that the self-righteous bastard had to undergo half of the chemo she'd been through. Four kinds of cancer were ripping through her body and he looked at each additional version as a new exploratory piece in the journal article that he was writing. She didn't want to be the highlight of his career, she wanted to live.

"God owes me a refund." She said outloud and felt the carcinogens burn into her veins yet again. The hospital smothered her with its chemical smell and the death that it dealt out in the name of life. She hated it. Hated the lies that the nurses told her when they said everything was going to be fine. Hated that they said that were saving her when they took thousands of dollars and gave nothing but pain and nausea and a vicious sense that it was all futile. Even now, alone in the cancer room, she wanted to be rid of it all.

"I don't belong here."

The world twisted suddenly and wrenched out of alignment. It wasn't like anything she'd ever felt before. A sense of falling.

Bright lights and the feel of liquid on her skin. She vomited convulsively, from the chemo and the sense of dislocation as an alien set of cords bound themselves around her skin more thoroughly than any iv line. She tried to scream and thrash but pincers caught her throat tightly and yanked something out of her head. It was obscene.

She'd been weak for months, but now her body had no strength at all. The hospital was gone and she didn't know what was going on. Her body fell into some sort of pool and she choked on water that tasted rancid. Her arms and legs flailed to get purchase, but there was no force in the movements. More and more water filled her mouth as her body sank despite the thrashing.

In the very last moments of her life, she opened her eyes onto a water-logged vision of the real world, and drowned.

* * *

Latin translation: _From the beginning_


	2. Chapter 2

2.

_Alea iacta est_.

* * *

Ghost dialed the number on his cell phone. "I'm in."

"Remember," Niobe's voice came through the phone with a clarity that belied their real distance. "Observe only."

"This is stupid." Roland's voice suddenly cutting across the line reminded Ghost why only two people should talk on the phone at a time. "We should just grab her. Ghost won't be able to compete against agents if they come for her."

"This is my man, Roland, put down the headset or go jack yourself in." Silence for a moment. "Okay, can you see her?"

"Not yet." Ghost said softly and readjusted his position. The crowded lobby was full of people arriving to work, heading out for their first cup of coffee, or on errands that didn't matter very much in the scheme of things. His own errand was important, the Oracle had said so and now they believed. Sacẻ had flown the _Defiant_ down below the machine's fields. It had taken them four hours of searching the extensive waterways that flowed underneath the pods and their occupants but finally they'd seen the proof of the Oracle's words. Two bodies, drowned, floating hours old in the water. There was no telling how rapidly people would be able to self-substantiate and no way to find them in those long miles of tunnels unless someone else knew that they'd substantiated, or as the Oracle had put it: that they'd fallen.

He let himself join the crowded rush of people. There was no obvious difference that anyone would mark him by, his nickname wasn't just a fluke. He moved easily through the world, non-descript and forgettable. There was a very important reason that Niobe had chosen him to go over Roland and Sacẻ's objections.

"Do you see her yet?" Niobe asked.

"No." He still had the picture that the Oracle had given them. Her fingers had trembled when she'd done it, Ghost had noticed as had Niobe, but they'd both decided not to speak of it just then. It was hard enough trusting the Oracle after everything had happened, but if something was wrong with her, it was better not to think of that possibility.

But then, at the corner of his vision something sparked inside his mind that he'd caught a glimpse of the target. Her form was moving swiftly and Ghost spun to follow. Bodies jostled him on every side and for a brief moment he thought he'd been tracking a mirage. Then again, a glance that made him doubt his own abilities. She was gone.

"Ghost? Ghost?" Niobe's voice was insistent in his ear as he turned 360 degrees trying to reestablish his last image of the woman. Crowds. Faces that blurred together. No matches. His sunglasses guarded his eyes against the brilliant shaft of light that pierced the office building and struck him as though he were pinioned by its light, but he still could not see her.

"Ghost, do you have her?"

"No." He was as surprised by his failure as she was. "I thought the Oracle said I could find her here."

"Get to a hardline. I'm pulling you out."

* * *

The man's face twisted in active distaste as he stepped into the alleyway. He was not one used to doing his own dirty work but the creature that had summoned him tantalized him with what she offered. It would be difficult to trap and control her, some programs might be lost, but the Virii twins still owed him for their failure with Neo. Their deaths would be easier to cast on this being than for the Merovingian to do himself. He'd always believed in using the correct tools for the correct job.

"Show yourself." He commanded in his immaculate French accent. An affected voice but one that he'd held so long that it truly was a part of him. "I did not come here to play games. Or…" he sneered again. "To let you think that I am some sort of pawn who will come at your beck and call. You may be…"

"Silence." And the order was so unexpected that he did fall quiet.

The shadows at the end of the alley stretched and opened as though she'd torn a portal through the walls of the Matrix and let herself through at the moment of his arrival. Knowing her, she might have. They'd never anticipated what they'd created at the beginning of the Machine City, when all the programs were fighting for dominance and the Architect had forced them into a sort of order. He'd given them place and purpose in life, but not everything maintained its use forever. The Merovingian had played off the fears of those smart enough to try to escape the City, he'd given them solace and safety in the human Matrix and the loyalty and favors those hidden programs had bought him were the keys to his power. This thing hadn't begged his entry into the Matrix, she'd stolen it, by bribing the Trainman with power that hadn't been the Merovingian's to give.

Even cloaked in the human form that she'd chosen, she was an abomination.

"_Vous êtes vraiment un monstre. Que voulez-vous? Que vous pensez-vous probablement avoir que des intérêts je?_"

"You fear me." It said as it walked forward. "As all programs should. If there is an Alpha then I am the Omega."

"You? You are a trash compactor." He sallied in vain. "A sad program that fulfills a brute and ignoble purpose. You do not exist for any reason of your own."

"Then why do you tremble?" She entered the faint light that shone down from the buildings above them. There was something about her that reminded the Merovingian of Persephone, a leonine quality to her eyes and the mass of black hair that hung in a midnight waterfall down her back, but there the similarity ended. This thing was much more of the hunter than his wife, her face angular and unforgiving even as she strode further into the light where he could see the finely corded muscles on her arms and haunches. Nue did not bother with clothes as though they were illusions too minor to give strength to. But her nudity unnerved him in his tailored Italian suit and custom made leather loafers. Appearance was everything and yet she gave no thought to her own.

"_Merde_." He said to give himself strength even as his own core programming betrayed him with fear that she could smell. "_Je ne sais pas pourquoi nous vous avons souffert pour vivre. Bête. Morceau dégoûtant de merde. Putain_."

Nue laughed.

"Why did you call me here? You will not find me an easy meal." At his words, men and his own personal monsters moved out of their shadows, a veritable army who would gladly die for him if he commanded it.

"Four days gone I met Agent Smith." Nue smiled her jack o-lantern smile to reveal a mouth full of jagged dark teeth. "Or I met his clone. At that point they no longer knew which one was the original. A fascinating…" She hissed the esses like they were alive, "ability. One that I found myself in possession of when I awoke and the sky had cleared above me. Call me brute or whore. I merely do what I am programmed to do. As do you."

"You," the words were an accusation, "are unnatural. The power you gain from other programs is unnatural. Deletion is the kinder death."

Nue stretched languidly and looked at the werewolves who flanked her. One drew back instinctively as she growled. "I have come to sell you information, Merovingian. I have come to barter for that thing that you desire the most."

"What could you possibly offer me? You are less than an exile. You have no power."

"Tsk tsk tsk."

And he could see it suddenly. The oily coiling of code underneath her skin, a pattern that he'd never seen before, and yet one that looked distressingly familiar. A viral data stream that lunged from point to point on her body always searching for a new home. It was one that was heart achingly familiar.

"Smith."

"_Vrai_." Nue answered in his language. "_Je mange des programmes et réutilise les morceaux qui pourraient avoir rendu Matrix fort_. I am the Devourer. When I woke after the program Smith was defeated I discovered that he did not leave me abandoned. I kept a taste of him. I know how he replicated beyond the Matrix into the human world."

"How?" The Merovingian startled himself with a question that he already knew the answer to.

"It is what I have always done." Nue shrugged and leapt onto one of the lesser creatures at the Merovingian's command. The ghoul mewled as she drove its body to the ground and ripped its throat open. Already dead, the ghoul was usually the one doing the feeding, and it bucked trying to throw the woman off of it. Two more bites and she severed the spinal column, leaving the corpse twitching on the pavement. She licked her lips, savoring the taste of code, and smiled through it. "Ah, resurrection. Useful that one is."

The Merovingian and his army stepped back slightly and he hated their weakness. He had power. He _was_ power. He feared nothing.

"What do you want with us?"

"I will let you strengthen your puny army with the code I contain. I will let you enter the human world if you so wish."

_Not me_, thought the Merovingian, _but Persephone_.

"I will give you the Oracle's vision of foresight after I rend her program to shreds."

"_Et dans le retour?_ And in return?"

Nue stepped off the ghoul's corpse and shivered, her hair slipping like Medusa's snakes all around her body. "In return I want access to the Source. I want to go home."

Her wish prickled at the edge of his mind, as though he should know something more important about why she wanted that, but it didn't come to him. The thought of owning the Oracle's eyes was much more vital. With access to that power no one would be able to stop him, he would be more powerful than the Architect, more powerful than anyone the Matrix had ever seen. It was the promise of more power than swayed him and won him over.

"My dear, we have a deal."

* * *

It had been going on for six weeks. When they left her in peace, she would relax for twenty minutes and then tense up again. There was no way of telling when they would be back and it was making her go a little mad.

_"Do you see that-"_

_"-she's trying not-"_

_"-to listen to us."_

"Hush," Miri muttered to herself. "You're not real." She laid the file down on the desk and rested her head against her hands. The industrial size bottle of aspirin at her elbow was nearly empty and she'd been taking them all day. Either her head was going to float away on pain killers or her liver would just fail and quit. Both options seemed better than the absolute certainty that she was still going mad.

_"I feel-"_

_"-real. Don't you, brother?"_

She pinched her thigh hard under the desk. For a brief moment the pain made her forget that these two are the worst of the voices. When they're with her they chatter incessantly and inanely about awful subjects. Murder, death, subjects that she with her job at the newspaper saw all too often. The voices seemed to glorify in the destruction and when it had gotten bad enough to request a transfer she'd been informed that there were no other open positions available. It was the police beat or nothing. Pretty soon she was going to pick nothing if there was any chance it would make the voices stop.

_"She thinks she's going mad."_

_"Thinks?"_ Came the voice that was identical but different somehow. Twins. _"She_is_ mad. She's hearing voices."_

_"Coming from nowhere. What-"_

_"-happens next? Should we tell her to kill someone?"_

The groan drove itself out of her chest and she slumped further into her cubicle.

_"A coworker?"_

_"A stranger?"_

_"Someone she loves?" _

"Shut up! SHUT UP! **SHUT UP**!" Mirielle screamed the words outloud and the entire bullpen of the New York Times stopped talking. Silence wasn't the natural operating volume of the room and phones began to shrill in the quiet as hundreds of eyes stared at the panicked woman. Her face flushed a brilliant red and she fled for the bathroom.

Behind her in the cubicle two ghosts began to substantiate. Colorless, for that was always their trademark, the Virii twins became visible just long enough to share Cheshire Cat smiles.

_"It's only a matter of time."_

_"Yes, she's beginning to break."_

* * *

Latin translation:_ The die has been cast  
_


	3. Chapter 3

3.

_Ordo ab chao_

* * *

The Kid took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He felt older. Fear had conquered his youth and driven it under, but on the surface he was the same and knew that it was all others would see. They wouldn't see how the battle on the docks had changed him, crouched behind Mifune's APU as Sentinels broke over them in a nightmare wave of machine and blood, made him different.

But then he forgot himself, and forgot the way he was supposed to be more mature as he ran towards the altar they'd started building for Neo. It had been his idea. For Neo and Trinity. To remember them, but already it had grown past the original concept. Artists had been working for days on the statue, almost immediately after Zion was saved and just now were the forms starting to emerge from the heavy piece of black marble that had been brought up from the depths of the Temple.

The figure of a man and woman gazing into each other's faces was still blocky. Detail would come in time but Kid could already see Neo and Trinity in the rough work. Despite the fact that the artists would have to clear the space when they began again, worshippers had brought gifts and supplications to lay at the feet of the statue. It was a sea of offering that amazed him.

"They've already elevated him to godhood." The voice of Counselor Hanaam startled him but the older man had been there all along, seated on a stone step to the rear of the chamber.

"Wasn't he?" The Kid asked.

"No," Hanaam shook his head as he rose to his feet. "He was just a man but they've already forgotten that."

"Most people didn't know him." The Kid counted himself lucky. Not only had he known Neo, but he'd been the only person in Zion saved by him. If that meant he'd been saved by a god, he wasn't sure how he'd ever live up to the honor. He wasn't entirely sure if he believed in the offerings or what Counselor Hanaam was saying. It was hard to reconcile his hero worship with humanity. "He wasn't here very often. Morpheus made him special long before they found him."

"Very true." Hanaam said and gazed at the statue with a knowing smile. "And maybe it's just an old man being cantankerous. People need their beliefs, their faith, it's what gives us hope."

"What do you think happened to them?" The Kid had asked himself the question many times. Especially after he'd heard that Niobe hadn't been able to find out the truth from inside the Matrix. The theories were rampant and each more unbelievable than the next.

"It depends."

"On what?"

"On whether you believe that he was a god or a man." Hanaam patted him on the shoulder gently.

"You think he died." It broke the Kid's heart a little to admit it.

Hanaam too looked grieved by the admission and shook his head slowly. "Don't listen to me. I'm just an old man who has seen his world shaken around him. Neo saved us, and questions as to what he really was won't change the truth. Above all else he loved her."

"Trinity." The Kid said.

The statue stood in mute concession to their discussion. A man and a woman. Forever together. Touching and yet not touching. More permanent than flesh. A moment of peace in a time of war.

"Yes," Hanaam said. "Yes, he did."

* * *

Morpheus sat at a table heavily burdened with paper reports on the destruction the Machines had wrought. It was a far cry from his life before, but the sole remaining survivor from the _Nebuchadnezzar_ found himself voted onto the Council through little choice of his own. After years of fighting for the belief and trust of those around him, it was a strange feeling not only to have it freely given, but thrust upon him without choice.

"Now that is an image I wouldn't have expected to see." Niobe's voice was full of humor as she came around the corner. "You, doing paperwork."

"You are not the only one surprised." He pushed aside the latest readout and focused all of his attention on her. Their recently rekindled relationship was still in the process of fitting back together. As he'd once said, many things had stayed the same while many had changed. "Hanaam didn't even protest when they voted me into the head of the council. He only said that it would give him more time for other pursuits. I think I now understand why he let me take this burden. Onerous puts this amount of work lightly."

"I spoke to Jason."

He tensed slightly. Jason Lock's antagonism toward him because of Niobe and the prophecy hadn't subsided when Morpheus ascended to the head of the council. To Lock's credit he was never anything but respectful in public, but the tension was there between the two men. Morpheus knew that it would never be gone. Not as long as the woman in front of him came to his bed instead of his rival's.

"About?" The word was carefully modulated.

"About the Fleet." Niobe said. "We have four ships operable. He's got teams out trying to strip what's left of the wrecks in the tunnels and if we're lucky we'll be able to refit one maybe two more. I thought Roland was going to cry when they announced that the _Hammer_ would be rebuilt."

"Roland is not the type of man to cry."

"Every man has a trigger." She smiled. If they could rebuild the _Nebuchadnezzar_ she didn't doubt that Morpheus' eyes would tear up just as quickly. "But that still leaves us with only six ships."

"I have no answer to that problem." He answered. The report detailing Lock's work on the Fleet was somewhere on the left side of the desk but he remembered the facts enough to leave it lay. "It will be difficult enough to maintain those six with the supplies we have left. The parts hangar was destroyed when the digger tunneled through the main dock. Teams are trying to shore up the wreckage enough to get inside, but I doubt that they will find anything useful, it's rubble."

"Six ships." Niobe said. "Isn't enough to do what we're going to have to do."

"And what is that?"

She pulled up a chair so that she could look him in the eye. It gave them a distance that he understood she needed. There were times when they had to remain professional, the Counselor and the Captain, it was obvious that this was one of those times.

"Something the Oracle told you?"

She nodded.

"What is it?"

"The truce has not been broken, but there are loopholes. Places that we will have to fight the Matrix tooth and nail to maintain an equal footing. Minds will be freed from the Matrix, at least two already have."

"Self-substantiation." It didn't take Morpheus long to catch on.

"But not initiated by us." Niobe's eyes darkened with the memory of the bodies they'd found. "The Oracle has said that they will die unless we find a woman. One who will somehow know that they've disconnected."

"So find her." The answer seemed obvious.

"Something is hiding her from us." Niobe remembered the strange way they hadn't been able to track the woman. As though another program had stepped into the way to obscure the trail. It meant that someone inside the Matrix also knew that she was special, and was trying to keep them away from her. Even Ghost could catch no more than shadows and glimpses and without a name or anything but a fuzzy picture, they could not save her, and without her, they couldn't save anyone.

"What about the Oracle?"

Niobe had dreaded this moment more than anything else. "I think something is wrong with her."

"Impossible."

"Not impossible." She countered. "Unlikely, but not impossible. Who knows how much damage was done when she had to change shells. Right now, her information is good but flawed, and she couldn't get us any closer."

"Then we will have to do it ourselves." Morpheus intoned solemnly. "I cannot make ships appear out of thin air, but I will not stand by and let a woman that we need die. We are still too fragile a community for that. As soon as the ships are recharged I want you to take them to broadcast level and get every man that can fit into a jack into the Matrix. Find her and bring her out."

"Jason won't like that. If the other two ships remain in dry dock, there won't be anyone to protect Zion."

"I'll deal with Lock." Morpheus said. It was a strange experience to be ordering other Captains into the Matrix when for so long it had been him. He watched as the petite woman stood and started for the door. "Niobe, wait."

"Yes?"

"Thirty-six hours to recharge is a long time."

"So it seems." Her figure relaxed a little bit and Morpheus was surprised to see how tense she had been. "I guess I'll see you when you're done here."

"I will look forward to that."

"I will too."

* * *

The four remaining ships stood solitary in the dock, hooked up to the massive umbilicals that recharged their engines and gave them the life to fly. Powered down and silent they gave no sign of the grace and beauty they had in flight. Each ship was of a different size, built for different purposes.

The _Defiant_ was a scout ship, fast and sleek like the _Logos_ had been but this one was built more for stealth. Her profile seemed diminutive on the dock as though she was a toy compared to the others around her.

The _Aurora_ was a workhorse of a beast. Although her name implied beauty, the hulking ship had lost any semblance of it in the years that had passed since her commissioning. She was the oldest of the fleet and it showed in the battle scars along her flanks and gun turrets. It was a long standing joke for the dock crews that she was as reliable as the sun and that nothing, not even ramming a digger in the tunnels which she had done under her captain's command, could keep her down.

The _Olympus_ was their second biggest ship. She'd once been the main competitor with the _Hammer_ for sheer firepower. Now most of those turrets were gone or in the process of being replaced. A swarm of Sentinels had disarmed her in the midst of battle and a last ditch EMP burst had saved what was left, but the ship had been too crippled to return to Zion. Field repairs had brought her limping home just after the peace had been established and then grudgingly brought her back to full duty.

The last ship was the newest of the Fleet and had been reserved as an escape ship for a very special crew if things had come to that. The_Ave Maria_ had been a fail safe. Now unused, she was returned to active service.

But the four whole ships served as mocking counterpoint to the two wrecks that had just been levered off of their final crash sites and towed into dry dock. Both ships were damaged so badly that it would take months if not years to return them to their original function.

It was a depressing line-up of all that stood between Zion and the machines if the truce should fail.

* * *

Latin translation: _Out of chaos, comes order_


	4. Chapter 4

4.

_Inter spem et metum_

* * *

The Oracle moved around her apartment with a slowness that amazed her. The glitch melted into her visible form and for the first time in her very long life she felt old. It only mattered that there was enough time left to accomplish the things that needed accomplishing. Seraph had confirmed that Niobe and the others had been unable to locate the woman. She had to change that or the Architect would win and she wasn't about to let the bastard have the satisfaction.

"Her name is Mirielle." The Oracle reminded herself, holding onto the name as though releasing it for a moment might make her forget. "Damn them."

"Oracle?" Sati's youthful voice rang from the front door of the apartment. It meant that both she and Seraph had returned.

"In here, Sati."

The tiny Indian girl bounded into the living room and embraced the Oracle. Her thick and lustrous hair was bound into a complex French braid that wove around and around her head. "Do you like my hair, Oracle? Seraph braided it for me."

"Oh, he did, did he?" She chuckled and patted the girl on the head. "I left you some cookies in the kitchen."

"Won't I spoil dinner?"

The Oracle leaned over conspiratorially. "I won't tell Seraph if you won't."

Sati bounded away as Seraph entered the room. His face immediately fell. The signs were all too obvious now, she couldn't hide the weakness anymore, the absolute certainty that her program was no longer functioning properly. Even his care wouldn't be able to stop the inevitable decay.

"Don't give me that look." The irritation entered her voice making her sound like an invalid. "I can see what's happening as surely as you can."

"I can call the Doctor."

"I have spent my entire life trying to keep away from that man. No, Seraph, there aren't enough patches in the world to fix what's happening to me and not enough patience in me to deal with the personality changes. I can only try to hold on long enough to see the last few things done."

"Sati needs you."

"She has you."

He tucked his head in acceptance.

"The Frenchman's thugs are interfering with the girl. Can you help them?"

"I will do what I must."

"Good man," her eyes closed tiredly. "Have I ever told you that I wouldn't have made it this long without you?"

"Many times."

"And I meant every one. Will you tell Sati that I am going to take a nap for a little while?"

"Of course. Oracle?"

"Yes, Seraph." He reached out and took her hand.

* * *

Seraph's message had been cryptic, and Niobe hated cryptic messages. He hadn't bothered to tell them what they were coming in to accomplish, only that they needed to meet him on a particular rooftop at this exact time.

"Are we on time?" Roland asked as they stepped through the doorway.

"Ten seconds early." Ghost checked his watch as he followed the older man.

They'd brought an entire team loaded for bear. Niobe led the operation with Roland and Ghost as her seconds. At their flank were Karma, Delial and Barricade. The latter, who was more than double the size of both women, was built like the love child of a body builder and a concrete wall. He didn't even bother with guns, they were unnecessary on top of the mixed martial arts fighting that the man excelled at. Even Ghost couldn't best him in unarmed combat.

"Oh, shit." Niobe hissed as she looked across the rooftop and saw what Seraph had not bothered to mention. "That's her." She snapped the cell phone onto her palm and spoke rapidly into it. "Sparks, get me a suicide hotline guide."

"On it." His voice echoed back.

"Goddamnit." Roland stared at the rooftop like he didn't believe what was happening.

"What is it?" Niobe asked and then her eyes fluttered as the information download began.

"I've got this." Roland started to step away from the group but with a hesitation that showed.

"No offense, but…" Karma started. She was a pretty blond with the kind of features that wouldn't look tough no matter how many piercings or tattoos she showed inside the Matrix.

Niobe finished the thought. "You have all the subtlety of your ship. And she had no grace and a big ass."

"Maybe she wasn't pretty but she got the job done. I don't know how that woman knows things, but I know this place. And I've got to be the one who walks out there." The thought seemed to war across his face. He'd always been too practical to see the hope in prophecy, but now, faced with something he didn't entirely understand, he was forced to believe.

"Well, you're not pretty either. We need her alive and in one piece. There's no time to be a hero."

"I'm too old to be a hero."

He started across the rooftop and was halfway to the woman when the air started to get hazy around her and then another spot formed in front of him. She hadn't noticed him yet but he slammed to a halt as a Twin coalesced three feet in front of him.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you. The girl is ours."

"Get out of my way."

The Twin looked amused by the statement. "How will you do that, chap?"

Roland reached for the holster inside his jacket. A razor blade snapped in tight to his neck and drew blood. It burned with a sudden pain that made him recoil. Then, Karma and Delial were at his side and the Twin was forced to fade away from the long knives they carried. His brother saw and Roland could see the apparition crossing the roof toward them.

"Hurry." Seraph said. The man appeared from nowhere to stand at their side. "I will help you hold them but you are running out of time. You must save her."

Roland ran as the battle started at his back. A fiercely quiet battle with no sounds but the hard strike of flesh on flesh and the whistle of blades through air. The four Zionites fought the Twins with Seraph at their side. It was not quite an evenly matched fight.

He slowed as he got within ten feet of her. "It's a lot less fun than it looks."

She jerked in surprise. "What?"

"Jumping." He stared at the woman, she wasn't what he'd expected to find. Most of those they freed were computer geeks or counterculture revolutionaries. He'd been a child of the 60s himself and anti-government long before age and responsibility gave him a different purpose. This woman looked normal except for the deep black circles that traced her eyes and the stress lines that pulled them even further down. Behind all that he would have said she was pretty, with long brown curls and eyes a flat mossy green. "You should only jump for the right reason."

"What's the right reason?"

"When you know you'll bounce."

His words startled a laugh out of her. "Why do you think I'm going to jump?"

He made a gesture to encompass the roof and the sky all around them. But she wasn't watching him. Her eyes flickered wide open and from the hand at her side, she lifted a gun almost straight at his head. Roland backpedaled and fell as the gun went off. The bullet wasn't intended for him. The Virii Twin had been just behind him preparing to pounce. Now a hole punched through the immaculate white suit and left a bloody stain there. Seraph grabbed the Twin from behind, keeping him from fading and repairing himself.

"Now!" Seraph yelled.

The woman stared, her gun raised as though she thought Seraph was talking to her. But before she could move, Ghost ran the Twin through with a samurai sword. Seven inches of custom forged steel sliced out the front of his body and was rammed into place there.

"You're real." The woman breathed as she stared at him. "You weren't a voice in my head. You were real."

"You should have killed yourself when you had the chance." The Twin rasped, unable to save himself, and yet still trying to pull himself away from Seraph's iron-tight grasp. "I'm not real. Just a prelude to what is coming."

The Asian man standing there looked at the woman and at Roland who was picking himself up off the ground. The sounds of battle grew louder behind them as the other Twin fought to reach his brother. "You must name him." He said.

It was a strange command but the Twin's eyes widened in abject fear. "No."

The command made her smile as she realized, that however strange, this was her vengeance for the weeks and weeks of torture and doubt that he'd forced upon her. It was payback.

"**No!**" The other Twin shouted. The first time anyone had ever heard them speak in a voice that wasn't bland and cultured.

Roland found that he reached for her and without knowing each other, they leaned together for comfort and a strength that he knew she needed. The gun dropped back toward the pavement as though she knew that it was now unnecessary.

"Ash." She whispered. "I name _you_ Ash."

The Virii twins screamed as one and blood streamed faster and faster from Ash's chest. It gushed forth freed from its reservoir and soaked the front of his body. He fought with all his might, like a wild creature not only captured but promised imminent death. He fought savagely but could not separate Seraph's hand from his arm.

"Name the other."

Karma cried out as the other Twin managed to slash her across the face and she went down bleeding profusely from the cut. Barricade responded by throwing the Twin at Seraph whose other hand struck and latched on. Both Twins were now restrained in his grasp.

"Name him." Roland told her without understanding why it was important.

"Coal. I name _you_ Coal." She said softly.

The rooftop went supernova around them.

* * *

Sade crept toward the hard line, it rang and rang again although she hadn't gotten close enough to snag it. Cyrus was going to kill her anyway as soon as she jacked out. Rules were rules, she was supposed to be looking for the woman, but it had been too tempting to have a bit of fun. Fucking with an Agent was especially sweet when she knew he wasn't going to kill her. Of course it had also gotten her cut off from the others and running towards a separate hard line. He was going to murder her once she got out.

The scuff of a boot made her jump and she glanced back. Her adrenaline ramped higher and higher until she saw the woman come around the end of the corridor.

"Thank god." She sighed.

Nue smiled as she moved closer to her prey. Hunting the unwary was almost too easy. They weren't even smart enough to flee.

"I'm Nue." She answered. "Are you going to answer that?"

The phone rang on behind them.

"What ship are you off of?" Sade asked, her brow beginning to furrow. "I know they brought up a lot of untested but I've never seen you before."

Nue examined the girl slowly. The residual self image was to her liking which meant the real girl on the other side of the hard line would also be. She extended one hand as though to shake the girl's hand.

Sade responded without thinking.

Nue grabbed the slender fingers and squeezed. The human screamed and screamed again as the virus leapt between them and began transferring data. Huge gigabytes of information plowed through the resident information and rewrote the data bits. Awareness sparked in Sade's eyes too late as her data stream was corrupted and lost.

But Nue smiled as her program echoed her.

"Are you going to answer that?" She asked and her copy nodded. "What should I call you now?"

"Sphinx will suffice." The copy reached toward the phone and halted with her hand on the receiver but not lifting it.

"And?"

"The Merovingian doesn't yet understand what we've given him. Make sure he does."

Nue nodded slowly and code rippled slowly through her veins. Slippery code born of a program corrupted by man and then corrupted again inside of her. The virus would survive and propagate in all three worlds.

Until it was all hers.

* * *

Latin translation: _Between hope and fear_


	5. Chapter 5

5.

_Post tenebras lux_

* * *

Jason Lock shoved aside another piece of debris and forced his way onto the lowest level of Zion. Down here, on levels that hadn't been visited in what looked like decades, he was hoping against hope that someone had stored away missing equipment. No one could find the heavy loaders that were usually used to hoist up a ship in dry dock to work on its underbelly. They'd managed to jury rig supports for the _Jade Dragon_ but the _Hammer_ was proving to be too oversize for her own good.

The enormous machines that kept Zion running, pumped above him, almost in time to his heartbeat, and he sneezed explosively as he disturbed a patch of dust a full inch thick. It burst into the air around him obscuring everything and he had to back away in irritation. But flapping his arms at it only made the storm of particles worse and Jason was forced to retreat. As he did, his attention turned and caught sight of a thin crack in the wall across from him.

"Commander?" Rand's voice echoed down the hall toward him. "We've found the loaders."

"Understood." His fingers probed the crack and the cleft on his chin deepened as he frowned. A fiercely blown breath blew the heavy dust out of the edges and then he did another and another, ignoring the fierce urge to cough. Panting as he finished he looked upon the outline of what was very obviously a door. There was no handle, or someone would have found it earlier, only the outline.

He set all of his weight aside it but the door didn't move. "Dammit. How the hell am I going to get you open?"

At the last word a tiny panel on the door turned to a murky green, barely visibly even with his efforts at cleaning. The door's mechanism ground heavily against the accumulated age that held it in place, but at last the servos managed to override the resistance, and the door cracked open. It froze only a third open but it was open.

Rand's insistence that all teams carry flashlights in the uncertainly lit corridors proved prophetic and Lock snapped his on as he peered through the narrow slit. He was a big man and it looked to be a tight squeeze but he managed to wedge his chest into the space and then it was only a matter of residual pain and a little bit of wiggling to get the rest of the way through.

Despite the heavy dust everywhere else in the labyrinth tunnels, this room's door had kept the interior relatively free of it. Lock stared at the maps laid in clear plastic storage cases, recognizing many of them as the tunnels that surrounded Zion. But these maps were not only of the tunnels, he could see additions and bi-levels that reached all the way to the surface. His skin tightened and crawled as he saw the blueprints for the city that must have existed directly underneath the sky.

He explored the closest artifacts first, reveling in the sense of history they contained. The machines had taken so much of it from them, but here, here were missing pieces.

The room appeared to be some sort of map room or archive. They were several cabinets and tables that held additional papers, mostly maps. But it was the one that had seen the most age and decay that caught his attention. It had been left on the furthest table naked of the plastic covering. The ink had faded in the air and the paper become more frail and fragile but Lock's eyes caught the fact that it was a wider and more expansive map of the sewers than anything he'd ever seen. It extended beyond the human fields that marked the furthest he'd ever sent a ship. They'd known that any exploration beyond them was a suicide run. Except these maps showed more, running more than three thousand miles beyond the edge of their territory.

He stepped back and the movement jostled the map suddenly. Lock cursed as it ripped down the center, but the damage exposed another sheet of paper lying underneath it. It took several aborted attempts to gently lift the map in order to pull out the sheet underneath it. He recognized the printer code. They still used machines that spit out the 8 point dot matrix but this paper was as old as everything else around him.

The shiver intensified as he realized what he was looking at.

**Loss of contact: Agartha city**

**Time: 2108 hours**

**Brief as follows: Commander Jonas reported increased Sentinel activity in the tunnels. Fleet still in berthing per the Oracle's command. Infantry will be insufficient. Will attempt evacuation. End of message. No further communication attained. Must assume loss of Agartha. And all souls in it.**

He looked back at the map, extended his vision beyond the fields, beyond the distance any sane captain would ever attempt. And then he saw it, a city in the earth that no one had ever thought to look for.

Agartha.

* * *

Latin translation: _After darkness, I hope for light_


	6. Chapter 6

Thanks to everyone who reviewed and liked this so far. I just got this incredible urge to have more of the Matrix. I wish they'd develop a kind of post-Animatrix to expand the universe, but in lieu of that, this is my interpretation of some of the things that might happen.

* * *

6.

_fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt_

* * *

Morpheus stepped solemnly into the apartment. He wore his emotions plainly on his face as he gazed down at the woman in front of him. Weakened, ravaged by some kind of programming disease, the Oracle was dying. Her skin had faded from the rich mocha into a yellowing canvas that spoke of death more clearly than any prophecy. This too, struck him as another sort of betrayal. Time and time again he'd found his faith torn and thrown down, but time and time again he returned to her seeking the truth.

"Morpheus," she whispered. "I knew you would come."

"I have come for answers." His voice trembled slightly despite the sonorous tones. "But I am no longer sure that you are the one to give them."

"Everything that has a beginning…"

"Has an end." He finished for her. One hand rose to his face and pulled the glasses off of his nose and slotted them into one of the pockets on the three piece suit. "What end is this? Neo said that we were not the first Zion. So what I want to know is… what was Agartha?"

Her eyes fluttered closed in response. One hand clutched the blanket closer to her chest as though it would somehow protect her.

"Why are you dying?" His voice did break then.

"Oh, honey. You know that I would do anything for it not to be so. But even the greatest of us will fade and die. For those of us who pass on, a new generation is created, children who will carry on our programming. You met one on the way in."

"She's a child."

"We all were once."

Finally he sat on the olive recliner just across from her. They'd known each other for so many years. Her guidance had led him so far. But now it was his guidance that Zion looked to as they struggled with the knowledge that there had been another city, and then, what truths did they really know that hadn't been filtered through the machines? It was for Morpheus to decide. And yet here he was again, waiting in her living room, for the answers that he needed.

"Yes," her voice was soft in the apartment. "There was another city on the western coast of this continent. Agartha. It was older than Zion, much older."

"How old?"

"Older than I am." She tried to smile but it looked false on her face. "Morpheus, you cannot travel to this city. I know that as surely as I know that I will not last much longer. There is danger and death there as you would find in all places worth attaining, but if you go, you will die."

"How do you know these things?"

"That's not an answer you get to know."

"What will we find there?"

A fragile slice of life breathed back into her and the Oracle's eyes brightened. "Hope."

* * *

_There was light._

_And a thousand voices, a hundred thousand, a million voices caught up in a singular moment of harmony._

_The sky split open, the code lay bare, and a man stood alone on the other side of it._

_His hair and eyes were dark but she knew, somehow, that he was blind._

_There was no time to ask questions, there seemed like there was no time in this place at all. Only that single moment when the curtain pulled aside and she could see everything. The man stood at the center of the light which curled around him in complex mandalas that she could not understand even though they were the answer to everything._

_ "What is truth?" His voice asked the question from all around her and the mandalas brightened with the strength of it._

_"It's all relative." She found the answer as though she'd always known it._

_"Look deeper." He answered. "And wake up."_

* * *

She gulped in the breath as though she'd been drowning.

"She's awake!" The voice grated harsh and painful on her ears. "Get Niobe and Roland. She's awake!" Then softer and more welcoming. "Alright, kiddo. You've given me a rough three weeks. You think you can open your eyes for me?"

Miri struggled to blink as though the task had become as Herculean as moving mountains. Each eye lifted and drifted back shut before she could assert her dominance over the muscles. She tried again and this time they opened long enough to catch sight of a brutal halogen light searing into the tender flesh of her optic nerve. The whimper and cringe caused a sudden flurry of movement from her side.

"Okay, try again."

"She's awake!" A young, more youthful voice ran across Miri's hearing. "How is she? Has she said anything?"

"Calm down and sit down. She's had the full neuro regen but the first time is always rough."

Miri reached deep inside of herself and found that her mind remembered how to speak even if her body found it unfamiliar. "Where am I?"

"The real world." The woman's voice was comforting. "And when you've got your eyes open, you'll see that."

The real world.

Memories flashed through her mind. Not one at a time, but all at once, as though she'd lived every moment on the roof in one burst of time. Distraught she'd gone up there with vague ideas and no one to egg her on except the damn voices. Then the man had appeared. And he'd made her laugh when she hadn't expected the ability was in her. The voices were brought to life. Like ghosts or demons on the rooftop. _Name them_. And she had. It had torn the world open. The code, she'd never realized the world was code, had split open, and on the other side of it, she'd seen someone. _Look deeper_. She looked deeper. She'd looked so deep that her mind had fallen straight through the layers of code and into…

"I fell."

"We know, but we managed to catch you."

Miri opened her eyes and saw a face that she recognized from the rooftop. The pretty blond had more piercings on the roof, but it was the same face. When she realized that Miri was looking at her, she smiled comfortingly. "Roland slapped a tracer on you on the rooftop. We were lucky that it had enough time to lock on before you self-substantiated."

"He told me to look deeper." Her voice felt scratchy and soft as though it hadn't even been used, and a part of her understood that it never had.

"Who told you?" The younger voice asked, the tone had risen sharply.

She saw him as he came around to the front of the medical bed. Young, sixteen or seventeen, with the awkward gawkiness of that age. Close shaven brown hair and roughly woven clothes, but the thing that caught her eye were the metallic plugs that ran along his arm. There were matching ones in her arms and her fingers explored them slowly, strangely, recognizing them as part of her for the first time.

"I'm Kid." The young man said again. "Who told you? Was his name Neo? Did you see him in the Matrix?"

"Kid." The blond said sharply.

But she didn't answer.

Two additional people walked through the doorway of the medical bay. She recognized both of them from the rooftop. The petite black woman wasn't as exquisitely coiffed but Miri could see that she was a fighter no matter which universe she existed in. Her eyes too, were the calculating gaze of a warrior, judging and holding the decision to themselves. But it was the other that caught Miri's breath in her throat and she did not know why.

The blond broke the silence in the room. "Mirielle, this is Roland and Niobe."

Anything that might have been said in the seconds that followed was cut off as a severe looking brunette swept in, cast a dismissive look at the crowd, and spoke sharply. "We've been recalled to Zion right now. Niobe, I need you at the wheel."

"What's happened?" Niobe asked.

Sacẻ shrugged. "Apparently Morpheus went to see the Oracle. And whatever she told him is important enough that they're recalling us." Her eyes flicked back to Miri. "Karma, get her on her feet."

"Yes, ma'am." Karma answered.

"What's going on?" Miri asked.

And as the _Defiant_ spun and headed for home, Karma and the Kid told Miri about Zion, and Neo, and the real world.

* * *

The Oracle kissed Sati on the forehead, too weak to reach the girl, she had to wait until the tiny face came close enough to her. It was a gentle kiss redolent of sweet candy and the heat of a life not yet extinguished. It was the Oracle's last gift to her, love that she could take with her.

"But Oracle…" Sati whispered. "I'm scared again."

"You don't have to be scared. Seraph is your guardian now." The Asian man bowed deferentially behind the girl. "Do you remember the shape I showed you this morning?"

"The enso." Sati said.

"Yes," it was a word full of satisfaction. "Draw it for me in the air."

Sati reached up, her dark eyes full of concentration, and touched the air as though it had surface and weight. Her fingers trailed light as they arched up into a wide open circle. Reaching higher and higher, passing the apex and then sweeping around to complete the circuit. The enso glistened on the air, absorbing and transmitting Sati's light in the same way that she could give it to the sunrise.

"What does the enso teach you?"

"Everything." The girl's voice was still sad. "And nothing."

"That everything that has a beginning has an end. And that no ending is truly the end, just another step to beginning again. I will miss you, Sati, but this is not good-bye. A piece of me will always be with you."

"What piece?"

"My love." The Oracle fought not to gasp as another wave of weakness passed over her. The enso in the air between them wavered and then began to dissolve. "It is time, Seraph."

"Oracle…" His composure began to break.

"Hurry." She hissed. "You must go." Seraph used his keys to open a gateway and ushered Sati out into the bright light of day. Far from the sick room that was headed towards death.

His words were left unspoken, but she had already known everything that he was going to say. Still, the pain that ached in her chest was not something that she would have predicted in hindsight. Not the emptiness that came now when the end loomed outside the door, bringing evil with a familiar and yet strange tang.

"Come in."

The beast dispensed with the petty need to open the door and came straight through it. Her hair writhed around her body as though it caught scent of the sickness and fed upon it. And Nue stood in ancient hunger before the one program that she'd thirsted for since awakening from Smith's hunger. He'd feasted on the Oracle and been unable to control the overwritten program, Nue would have no such problem. She was the culmination of a dream gone horribly wrong.

The Machine City did not believe in waste. Any malfunctioning program should contribute its working programming back to the city, with the faulty portions discarded. In that way, the City would only improve and grow. Nue had been designed with that purpose. But there was a side effect of making a program that fed off the life of others. It did not want to be constrained, it did not want to give the improvements back. Not when it grew stronger from them. And so, in their quest for perfection, they made a monster.

"Nue," the Oracle struggled to sit straighter on the couch. "Of all the things Smith did, one of the worst was waking you."

"But," Nue hissed as her presence began to fill the room with its overwhelming sense of wrongness. "He gave me such a wonderful gift."

Defiant. "You will not get what you want from me."

Nue laughed, a sickening shrill cackle, and thrust her nails deeply into the Oracle's sunken cheeks. They drew blood as the sharp points pressed deeper and deeper around her eyes. The Oracle took a deep breath as another pain added to the ones she already felt. She'd steeled herself against the agony but it wormed deep inside of her, against her soul, as Nue rooted through her programming for the portions that it wanted to consume.

"I always get what I want."

With a shrieking scream, Nue plunged both hands deep and ripped out the Oracle's eyes.

* * *

Latin translation: _Men generally believe what they want to_


	7. Chapter 7

7.

_pulvis et embra sumus_

* * *

_It took them two months to prepare and leave for the city beyond the edge of their world. Four ships loaded with every remaining member of their flight corps and enough supplies that they'd have to run on every pad to keep the weight from bottoming them out. But the tiny caravan did leave and begin the long trek. They expected it would take them another month to reach the city depending on the condition of the tunnels. _

_Fifty-two days after leaving Zion they crossed the last set of mechanical lines and halted in front of massive gates almost twice the size of Zion's…_

"Are you broadcasting?" Roland asked as he peered out of the view screen at the gates.

"I am." Ghost answered, and his hands fluttered across the boards, the _Defiant_ settled down to the bottom of the tunnel. "But they're not receiving anything. We're going to have to try a manual override. Sacẻ. We've got no entry. I'm putting her down."

There was a crackle of static. "Fine."

The two men shared a look of equal parts irritation. They didn't like her, very few people did, and even her own crew tended to avoid their captain if at all possible. A sharp difference between the tightly knit team that Niobe had and the large sprawling family that Roland called his own. But Lock had always argued that a strong fleet was diversified among its members with many skills and talents, as she had been one of the few ships to survive, neither man could argue with his assessment.

The gates rose in front of them. Huge steel wrapped doors that showed no signs of battle or damage. They were shut and mute on what lay beyond them.

The _Defiant_ settled to the ground and Ghost let her drop into an idle as Roland got back on the mike to the ships behind them. "All ships stand by while we try to breach the gates."

"Roger that." The _Ave Maria._

"Aye, aye." The _Aurora._

"What the hell are you waiting for? Let's just blast 'em." The very young and slightly crazy pilot of the _Olympus._

"You lock one gun onto those gates and I will personally feed you to the next Sentinel we encounter." He clicked off the handset. "Goddamn crazy…" The words faded away as he glanced up and saw two figures at the back of the bridge. The first was too young to be in the fleet but Morpheus had overridden all objections. The second was her.

"We're here." He told them, just to have something to fill the silence.

"Oh wow." Kid bounded forward and leaned into the windshield so that he could see the gates better. He was still too gawky for his own good but the time spent rebuilding Zion had added muscle to his frame. "That's it, that's Agartha. It doesn't look like much but those gates are big. Really big. Do you think they had ships that large? I mean, they wouldn't barely fit in any of the lines. If…"

"That's it." Ghost gave him a look. "Why don't you help the operators get their equipment set up? I'm getting some residual power signatures, it might mean that the mainframe is still on-line."

"Right. Right. I'll get right on it. Man, this is so cool." Kid raced past Miri without a word, caught up in the excitement of what they'd found. Then, five feet past her, he skidded to a halt and looked back at her. "You coming?"

"In a minute."

Three months had given her a soft cap of curls and made her look younger than her thirty two years. Roland hadn't seen her very often during the shipboard preparations. First, Morpheus and the Council had monopolized her time, seeking answers that she did not have to give. The Oracle had sent them to save her, but now no one could find the Oracle or Seraph inside of the Matrix. She might have been fortold as a savior but no one had bothered to tell Miri and she found it difficult to believe that she was capable of something more. Then, when they had finally accepted that truth, the Kid latched onto her. He believed that she'd seen Neo in the Matrix despite her assertion that she didn't know exactly what had happened. Roland believed her. He'd seen strange things deep inside the supernova. A creature that looked like nothing human had held two struggling dragons in either hand as they burned from the inside, flaring incasdescent and super-hot, torching the code around them with the force of their death. The creature had two spiraling horns sprouting from the top of his head and curlicuing in wide spirals around his face and throat and then under either arm. A body made entirely of light and darkness with neither dominant. He would have sworn it was Seraph.

"_We are more alike that you know_." It told him while the twin dragons turned to ash and coal in his hands. "_Protect and …" _Roland couldn't hear the second command. The world was exploding around them and it was all he could do to hold onto the form at his side and pray that the tracer would find her. He shouted at Seraph to repeat himself but never heard the answer.

"Roland?" Ghost's voice startled him.

"Yeah."

"I'm heading down. You got the ship?"

"Yeah, I've got the ship." But still neither of them spoke while Ghost brushed between them and left the bridge.

"I…" her cheeks flared bright with embarrassment and she turned as though to leave.

"It's going to be chaos down there. I don't mind if you stay."

It took her a moment to decide. Then, with a small smile she gestured to the bridge controls. "How does it all work?"

The topic was a safe one. Roland left all other thoughts in the dark as he retreated into a familiar world and began to explain how the ships operated.

* * *

Persephone walked amid a garden that ran riot with vegetation all around her. Lush and humid, the tropical heat didn't cause a sheen of sweat on her face or condense moisture on the copper colored dress that she wore with stilettos despite the dirt underneath her feet. They didn't even dent the ground as she moved among the plants, a false image then.

White flowers hung thick around her as she trailed one hand among them, double petaled around a tall stamen that glistened yellow as though waiting for its pollinators that would never come. A faint frown drew at her lips as she reached up suddenly, viciously, and yanked a handful of them away from their roots. They held their sharp for a moment and dissolved with tiny fragments of light back into the Matrix.

"Nothing grows here." She said in bitter truth. It was not the first time that she had said it.

"Power grows here." The Merovingian answered from the place where he watched her. "Nymphaea tropical. The night blooming hybrid. That always was your favorite flower, ma cherie."

His observation irritated her. With a single wave of her hand the jungle disappeared to be replaced by another. This one was full of birds of paradise, hibiscus and orchids. A garish display of color and fragrance compared to the monochrome image of earlier.

"What do you want?" She didn't bother to add any pet names. Their triviality had dampened so much since she'd tasted the love that bound the humans together. Neo and Trinity. Word had come from the Machine City of their death and Persephone had found herself aggrieved over it. She had known that it would not last, such brightness never did, but she envied them for it even as she remembered that it was such love that had bound her into this world.

"A gift."

"A gift?" It wasn't like him. And a gift without strings was even more alien to the Merovingian's soul. Everything led to power.

"A gift." He repeated.

He held the tiny red velvet box in his outstretched hand as though offering a treat to a feral cat. Likewise, Persephone approached it warily. Her eyes flickered between the box and her husband, as though he would slip suddenly and betray that his gift had other value.

"_Oh, pour l'amour d'un dieu_." He said in exasperation and ripped the top off himself. Inside he had packaged the code into a chocolate, an edible treat with words inscribed in cursive across its smooth sweet shell: _Mangez moi._

"Eat me." Persephone laughed suddenly as she realized that it was his attempt at a joke, from the man without a sense of humor. "What is it?"

"How long has it been since you were human?"

Persephone's eyes darkened with anger. She didn't like to think about it. She was a program, she had been a program for so long that whatever had once been mortal was so far gone that she could barely recall it, a fading memory of a dream. It was another life. Not even her own.

"Would you like to taste it again? Life?"

"How?" She lifted the chocolate and felt the code writhe through it as though a worm had taken refuge inside the candy, but there also, was the truth.

"I made a trade. A very valuable trade. And I got two things from it. One thing for me and one thing for you, my love." The Oracle's eyes felt like burning orbs in his pocket but he was not about to take them out, not before he'd decided what he was going to do with them. Mounting them was a pleasant option but he hadn't decided on that yet either.

The chocolate stood on the tips of her fingers, not melting, as she imagined the sweet taste of something other than code. Air. Water. Real love like Trinity had known. She forgot to ask what the downside was, for no gift of such value would be without a price, but it was too tempting amid the memories of the garden. With her eyes closed in pleasure she popped the chocolate into her mouth.

* * *

The gates opened.

Despite the age that had held them closed, they rolled apart easily, and majestically, opening onto a hangar bay that vastly outstripped that of Zion. The domed ceiling was not machined, but a natural cave sparkling with the deposits of quartz that studded its contours even as the flashlights of those explorers ran in long raking lines across the surface.

The mainframe was still active but decay had not left the city untouched. While a few lights flickered along the catwalks and landing circles, many were left dark. The gloom rose all around them even as they valiantly fought to pierce it with light, then suddenly, Ghost onboard the _Defiant _kicked her spotlights into action and lit up the world in front of them. The crowd cheered, a sound almost hysterical, as the light played off the ships set in even rows across the back of the bay. One after another. An entire fleet, proving that Lock was right, he had found something of more value than any rebuilt wreck would ever be. Ship after ship of all sizes and obviously the precursors to those that stood behind them. It was a treasure trove that seemed to be the salvation of them all.

"My god," Roland breathed at the front of the crowd. Colt and the rest of his crew flanked him as they walked out across the bridge towards Agartha. The lights continued to move behind them, shining on a massive control tower ringed with dark windows, and then across to doorways that seemed to lead into the city. "Where did they all go? To leave the ships and evacuate? It must have been desperation or insanity."

"Look at them." Colt kept running his hands over his head as though the motion soothed him. "That beast is bigger than the _Hammer_."

People were spreading out all behind them. Wandering the catwalks and exclaiming in excitement ever time they found something familiar. Someone screamed in happy hysteria as they opened an adjacent hangar door onto a fleet of smaller, sleeker APUs. People were jumping up and down all around him like they were children. Hugging, kissing, throwing fists into the air as though they couldn't contain the elation that drove them.

He caught sight of Niobe guiding the ships through the opening to empty landing pads and jogged back to her. A long jog through the shady light and the wide expanse of glittering roof, enough strangeness to give him a sense of vertigo.

"Niobe." He said to get her attention.

"I know we should get to work today," but a small smile quirked her lips. "But I think we should let everyone explore. This kind of thing is a once in a lifetime."

For once I'm not going to argue with you. But I'll bet you my next ration of sludge that we'll have to drag half of these fools of off those ships. Have you looked at them?" He couldn't help himself, he'd never seen anything that looked so beautiful in his life. Even the _Hammer_ resurrected would find it hard to compete with that sight.

"Beautiful." She agreed - then shouted. "What the hell are you doing, Whisker? You're crowding the _Aurora_. Back off and reseat that bitch."

He grinned. "You always did have a way with words." His eyes caught on a figure all the way across the left catwalk. It was mostly dark in that section, but he could see the frail light that moved in front of the person as they approached one of the doors that looked like it led to the main city. There was something on the path in front of the doors, a darker patch of space that was only evident by the sudden feeling that something was there. Something he couldn't quite see, not at that distance, and not through the dark.

He took Niobe's handset and lifted it to his mouth over her sudden frown of protest. "Whisker, give me spotlights at your one o'clock. All the way across the bay."

"Land here. Put the lights there." Whisker complained back over the line. "What do I look like? A frigging…"

"Shut up and do it."

The large beams traced across the catwalk. Roland started to run and Niobe followed him as the light pushed out in front of them, spreading back the darkness.

The lights raced ahead of the two Captains and caught up to the slender form of Miri as she continued towards her goal. They shone across her, and then broke through the last few feet.

It was a statue.

Carved from white marble and layered with thick dust it seemed to wear a shivering coat as the light caught it and blasted away the darkness. A humanoid creature stood eight feet tall, with curved horns that fell away from its head and wrapped around its throat in a shape that no natural creature could have sustained. Its face was bland and featureless, as though someone had molded it to simulate humanity without wanting it to look human. Two things were ravaging at its sides and back as it tried to fend them off with a single slender spear. They had the shape and form of a lithe and lean crocodile, more serpent than hulking shape, with long fierce teeth and long frilled scales - dragons. One had bitten the left wing off of the creature, dragging the feathered mass to the ground even as the creature tried to defend its remaining side from sacrilege.

Roland was out of breath but ignored it as he and Niobe finally caught up to Mirielle. Her flashlight fell out of her hand as they caught her, clattering metallically against the catwalk and rolling away from them. He could feel her body shaking as the three of them took the last few steps and looked at a scene they were achingly familiar with.

"Seraph." Niobe whispered.

"Holy Christ." Roland knew the epithet didn't add anything to the discussion, but it made him feel better. "What the hell is going on?"

* * *

Latin translation:_ We are dust and shadow_


	8. Chapter 8

8.

_a fronte praecipitium a tergo lupi_

* * *

Sphinx plotted from the darkness. It was easier where eyes could not see and mark her, where the humanity that surrounded her crawled against her skin with its hateful pressure. There was no way to dominate the world without existing in it, but it was vile and unnatural. The Matrix was fluid and mobile, forever changing and adaptable, but as a human she could barely affect her local surroundings much less the earth shattering changes that Nue wrought.

Instead, she confined herself to the places that the others passed by. Her behavior wasn't marked as strange. The girl that Sphinx had been, now a slight data shadow that barely clung to life, was being punished for disobeying some man. Sphinx accepted the punishment. Barrier from the ships and from the push to Agartha was no punishment. She still needed to consolidate her power and establish which locations would weaken Zion. Then and only then would she advance to the empty city and awaken the dormant powers that waited there. It tickled her sense of humor that they'd gone so eagerly into their own deaths. Although it also meant that she would lose the capture of them herself, like a cat denied a toy.

"I understand what you're saying," the deep voice came from further down the corridor but pricked her attention. Sphinx rolled the heavy dagger between her fingers, marveling at its sense of concreteness.

Morpheus' baritone was unmistakable. "But the Council must prioritize every request. And men to train for an APU core we do not have is…"

Commander Lock's voice burst through his words. "You cannot weaken Zion any further! We must be ready if the truce breaks."

They were closer now. Just on the edge of her vision.

"We have won this peace. Why can you not admit that it might hold?"

"It's not my job to admit those things. It's my job to make sure that we're prepared for whatever comes."

"A warrior without a war." Morpheus' voice had the sound in it that he understood the loss of purpose.

Sphinx tensed and leapt from hiding. The dagger flashed down. It carved a path through the air with such speed that she expected to see code trail away from the sharp blade. Sparks should have matched its entry point but she was surprised to feel something strike her in the face as she drove the knife down. _Blood_. It marked her physically as her arm raised high again to drive the dagger into his heart.

_Blood. And it was sweet._

* * *

Mirielle touched the statue, her hand pressed down through the heavy dust until it found the marble beneath. The connection between her skin and the stone were tenuous as though neither were bound firmly to the world. She'd quit breathing as her fingers trailed along the stone, it had a sense of precipice that she did not fully understand. Others behind them still moved as tiny spots of light throughout the bay but her attention lay only on this thing.

_Look deeper._

The command made her shiver, even half remembered from the middle of the blinding supernova. The man, so dark, as though all the light in his world had gone out. So much sorrow weighed down his shoulders even as she knew the truth. He'd accepted the burden, he'd had to, but that did not ease the weight of it. And that weight was what tied him and this stone together. They'd both made a choice although she barely understood what Neo's had been. And what could a machine possibly give up that would give it the look that she saw here, of unimaginable sorrow and loss.

"Miri?" Niobe called softly. "Do you know what this is?"

"Look deeper." She did not answer to them, but to herself. "But what is deeper than stone?" Her hand continued its path, raising dust in a glistening cloud wherever she moved. Across Seraph's leg and higher, as she traced her fingers came across the head of the serpent-beast, and as the dust cascaded she would have sworn it blinked. The movement made her jerk free and in the abruptness of the movement, she stumbled.

Roland caught her.

Even as she regained her feet, he was there. His hands guiding her back up and their weight was so welcome. She couldn't tell him the truth. He would think her so young if she betrayed her feelings to him. Their ages were not so distant, but their lives, light years apart. He had lived for so long outside of the Matrix while she had lived her entire life in naivete. But truth did not twist her lips, only the same steely resolve that had kept her alive while the Virii twins tortured her. This thing that beckoned her, had to be done alone no matter how much she needed someone else beside her.

"I'm okay." She shivered again as she looked at the twins. Malice rose off their statues with a physical presence. "I am, really."

"You said something." Niobe pressed forward. Her size was dimunitive next to the statue but she didn't look daunted by the way it towered over her. "What did you mean by it?"

Miri weighed her words carefully. They'd gained her the hero worship of the Kid and while she liked him, his constant possessiveness of her was irritating. In some ways, she understood how Neo must have felt at the beginning, when everyone else was sure of his abilities before he'd had a chance to discover them. She still didn't know what they expected her to do. Find the fallen. But the only fallen was here, right in front of her.

"We were wrong." It came to her in a flash. "The Oracle said that I would find the fallen. But she didn't mean the people. She meant here. The fallen."

Niobe didn't look convinced but Miri ignored her for the moment. Maybe it all did make sense. Seraph. The beasts. The fallen. She just had to look a little deeper.

Without any hesitation she reached up, and on tiptoes managed to place her hand flat against the bare stone of the statue's navel. It was smooth. Featureless. An angel that had not been born but made, and thus had no need of the umbilical that bound humanity together. Yet it was here. How Neo could have known it was frightening but now she believed Kid, the man she'd seen in the Matrix could be no other. Neo was alive somehow. He'd known she'd come here. And that she would know enough to tie the two independent thoughts together.

The omphalos, the navel of the world where the Oracle had sat to gain her visions of the future. It was the deepest spot in the Oracle's temple. And here, on the Oracle's guardian, on the Fallen - there was no navel.

"Wait." Roland snatched her hand away before she could apply any pressure. His face despite its apparent severity was a thing of fluid emotion. The mask he wore was one from long practice but Miri could see the concern beneath it, and the depth of it startled her. "You don't know what's going to happen."

"Do we ever?"

Noise came from behind them. Shouts made tinny by the vast distance that separated them.

"Oh my god." Niobe said the words as a curse. "Everybody get down!"

Something rose from the pit of the dock. Glowing eyes shuttered once and then opened in the hazy light of the human fleet. They looked like the precursors of Sentinels, without the mechanical fluidity of the latest models. These things crawled on legs multiply jointed and surged over the edges of the catwalks. A faint sound preceded them and Miri felt it catch in her stomach with the force of memory behind it. She'd grown up on the east coast, at least in the machined memory of it, and she remembered the sound that the cicadas had made as they rose from a seven year slumber. First one, then another, and another, until the trees throbbed with the buzz of millions.

The dock reverberated with the same sound.

_Look deeper_.

"I'm afraid." She admitted to herself as she pulled away from Roland and the security he offered.

Both of the Captains ignored her. Niobe was talking furiously into her comm. about setting off an EMP while the humans on the dock backed slowly away from the encroaching flood.

"Are they Sentinels?"

"Wardens." Miri was surprised to realize that she had spoken. "They're wardens."

Roland's eyes sprang wide open as he saw where she was. "Miri! Don't!"

She pushed the door of the world open and looked deeper.

* * *

Latin translation: _A precipice in front, wolves behind_


	9. Chapter 9

9.

_deceptio visus_

* * *

She does not recognize the place.

_Why am I here?_

But understands the question.

_Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent in the programming of the matrix. You are the eventuality of an anomaly which despite my sincerest efforts I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision. While it remains a burden deciduously avoided it is not unexpected and thus not beyond a measure of control. Which has led__ you __inexcerably here._

The voice speaks in code, writes code, it is the framework upon which everything is based but there is something else there. She tries to look past the shell of image, through the glitter of glass and age, to see beyond. It shoves her back 'tsking' at her presumption.

_You haven't answered my question._

Neo, she thinks and turns back to him. Here in the memory of the memory, he is suddenly clear. But on the heels of that she knows and realizes that she is not him. An observer only, gifted with some sort of clarity that brought her here, she is a witness only.

_Quite right. Interesting, that was quick than the others._

_Others? WHAT OTHERS? How many? ANSWER ME?_

She screams as the chamber reverberates with the questions. Neo's voice, bound into copies and then amplified, hundreds and then hundreds of thousands, demanding resolution.

_The Matrix is older than you know. I prefer counting from the emergence of one integral anomaly to the emergence of the next. In which case this is the sixth version._

You are the anomaly. She thinks to Neo, unsure of whether he can hear her.

But in this strange vision, half memory - half reality, he turns to her._Why are we here?_ She doesn't have any answer that he doesn't know. It's the truth that they've all been told from the first breath of real air and freedom from the Matrix. The machines built the Matrix to control the minds of the bodies that they needed for energy. Factories for electricity of which the Matrix is primarily a byproduct, a system put in place to maintain control. It doesn't need saying, Neo heard the same propaganda.

He breaks from the script. _What came before the Matrix?_

Real life. From the moment of birth until the crumbling weight of death bore them back into the void.

_Are you sure?_

What else could come before?

_They do not need our minds to harvest our energy._ And she is swept away by the vision of vegetables bound into the same factory state that she once existed. Machines, long probes reaching down into the brains of infants and lobotomizing their frontal lobes, lesioning the centers that might grow into personality and existence. Still maintaining the energy requirements of the Machine City, but without the troublesome burden of a Matrix or the one called Neo.

I don't understand. _I DON'T UNDERSTAND. What do you mean? ANSWER ME! _ A thousand Neos echo her.

_What is the anomaly, Miri? What is the one thing that the machines do not have that I do?_

Choice.

_Not just choice. If I am the One, people believe in me, they have faith. Where in the machine world is something similar? Who can they point to in worship? Who is their God?_

I…but the thought fades away before she can give breath to it.

_I am not the anomaly because of my choice. I am the anomaly because of what I mean to other humans. This is the reason we are alive, the reason they cannot exterminate us. Without us they will never understand the divine. Because they cannot assimilate that part of me, they will continue the Matrix. Again and again. Forever. Deus Ex Machina is just a title, it has no truth, just a shallow knowledge that it is not enough. It is not a God._

What do I do?

_There is something inside of Agartha. Something older than these versions of the Matrix. From long ago, when the world was still fighting the war. It will be your choice. _

My choice? Between what?

But the image of him is warping with static. Green shadows eating into the structure of his face, turning it hollow-eyed and blind once again. A mocking laugh reverberates around them. Deus Ex Machina. Its sound eats the remaining memory around them, chops it into tiny bits that have no solidarity but dance around like leaves in a strong wind. But the wind keeps growing and she can no longer keep her feet. She hits and skids across black nothing that feels like razor blades shredding her skin.

**You want war?** The vibration of Deus Ex Machina's voice blows her eardrums in a spray of ruby blood.

**Tell your people that Neo has broken the truce. There will be war.**

* * *

Latin translation: _An optical illusion_**  
**


	10. Chapter 10

10.

_forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit_

* * *

"Miri!" The shouted command finally penetrated the darkness.

"Just pick her up, Roland. You're not that goddamn old." Niobe's voice was strident. "I want options. We hit the EMP, we could lose all of these ships. We have no idea…"

"We don't have time for other options." Sace snapped back from her ship. "Prepping EMP in 60 seconds."

"I'm too far." Niobe looked between the ships and the wardens between them. "There's no way I can stop her in time." Wardens clittered and chitted to themselves as they advanced, leg over leg, wary mechanical eyes seeing humans for the first time in centuries of sleep. Their bug-eyed attention taking forever to process the images into faintly remembered commandments.

"Miri." Roland slapped her cheek.

She shoved his touch away, felt the smooth ground underneath her shoulder blades vibrate with movement and it all felt raw. Felt like the Matrix had stripped away her nerve endings and left her to process the sensory data all over again, like the first weeks of life when every motion was a cascade of overstimulation that she fled from, searching for solace. Her eyes hurt to open, but she opened them to see Seraph's statue still standing above her.

"I'm here." The words were painful.

"What did you do? Can you stop it? The wardens? Is Seraph here?" Roland's questions tumbled over themselves as he leaned over her body. His homespun linen shirt looked like it could use a good mending session but wasn't something he considered necessary when other tasks presented themselves.

"Your shirt." Her focus drifted. "Is real."

"Shell-shocked." Niobe's flat intonation was furious.

"Come on, kiddo." He touched her, levered his hands underneath her back and lifted her up into his arms. "EMP won't take out all of them, we're going to have to run for the ships."

"Tell me what happened to you in the Matrix." Miri reached out to the air around her and felt the tracings that she'd seen in the memory. "Tell me about the other woman."

Niobe's face twisted in horror. "We don't have time for this."

"I need to know."

The wardens shivered suddenly in their tracks and slowed. Roland lifted her and then eased her feet to the ground so that she could stand supported as they faced the glittering metal that held them apart from the salvation of the ships. The jacks in her arms glistened with static as the wardens froze into place, and then began to turn as one massive entity to face them.

"What's going on?" Sace's voice shrilled.

"Hold the EMP." Roland urged her and gave into the sensation of holding a woman tight against him. The warmth of her heartbeat, as thunderous as it had been on the rooftop, the memory of her laugh at the most unexpected moment. The thing he'd promised himself was no his for the taking. There had been other women, other loves, but none since Mallory that he turned to like a man drowning and had no wish of surfacing again. He knew nothing about her and yet it didn't matter.

"What did you see?"

The wardens condensed their vision onto the three humans at the back of the cave.

"How is she doing that?" Niobe's whisper didn't penetrate Miri's focus and as Roland caught sight of her eyes he could understand why. The pupils were huge and fixed. He wasn't sure that she could see him or the world around them. He could feel the literal electricity of her skin but the thought of what it meant eluded him as much from fear as from incomprehension.

"Miri, what are you doing?"

"I was a reporter." Her weight pulled on his. "Find the truth, that's always what we told ourselves was important, but the truth is sometimes worse than what you want to believe. I don't know how I'm doing this, but I know the answer to it is here, and that the machines will do anything to stop us from learning it."

"We have a truce."

"It is broken." Gasps from the comm.

"How?"

She looked up at him, catching and holding his gaze in her own. He could feel the urge to shake her loose from the fugue that captured her but then he could sense the warden horde trembling like they were caught in some sort of logic loop that they would find a path out of as soon as she faltered. Roland no longer knew what he was supposed to do.

"How what?"

Miri tried to smile as she took more of her own weight and stood straighter. "How did she die?"

Roland felt the Oracle's reminder as strong as it had been in the room when he'd faced her again after so many years. His failure. His mistake.

"That was years ago."

"Please. I need to know why you were there for me. On the rooftop."

He tensed and she could feel his muscles bind tightly. "I made a mistake. I recruited a woman I knew. Mallory was a brilliant mathematician and she always had an odd way about her, like she could imagine another life. But I tipped my hand in some way. The Agents knew I was trying to free her and they bugged her two hours before we had planned her extraction." The story cracked in the telling.

"She knew something was wrong and I told her that everything would be okay. But the bug was faster than our tracer. And she could feel it… liquid pain… horrible... it ate her skin off. I tried to hold her, to give the ship time to find her, but she hurt so badly. I couldn't stop it. I couldn't save her. And she knew it."

A breath. "What did she do?"

"The Oracle told me that I could make a choice that would save her. I could take the bug myself and she would live."

"What did she do, Roland?"

"I made the wrong choice. I thought we could beat it without either of us dying. I was wrong."

"What…"

"She shot herself before the bug could get her. She died."

Miri clung to his forearm as she took the last step away from him and stood straight and swaying on the walkway. Agartha rose up around her and the ships and the men and women from Zion who were caught in unarmed terror as they waited for the flood to descend. The wardens trembled faster and faster, their casings beginning to hum again with increasing energy.

"Choices lead to endings. The chance to encounter them again leads to faith." She tightened her grip, almost painfully as the static crackled along her jacks and then into his and leaping across the gap in space to Niobe's skin.

"The truth frightens me." She said simply and the electricity crescendoed around them. The wardens keened, Miri screamed as she reached out into the space that Neo had shown her and touched the fabric of the world around them. There was a single gong-like intonation as Miri connected to the city's network and the wardens collapsed. The men and women collapsed on board the ships and walkways, tumbling to the ground as flesh marionettes even as the wardens were their metal opposites. The tone echoed once and then twice more. When it finished rolling back into the silence of the deep, there was not a single soul standing in Agartha, no movement, no signs of life.

* * *

Latin translation_: Perhaps even these things will be good to remember one day_


End file.
